An ongoing review of politics and culture

I’ve been pretty surprised by the generally positive reaction to Avatar — genuinely impressive technical achievements aside, it’s not much of a movie.

UPDATE: I like John Podhoretz’s take quite a bit (though, as a diehard Michael Mann fan, I’m probably less concerned about the lack of jokes than he is):

One would be giving James Cameron too much credit to take Avatar-with its mindless worship of a nature-loving tribe and the tribe’s adorable pagan rituals, its hatred of the military and American institutions, and the notion that to be human is just way uncool-at all seriously as a political document. It’s more interesting as an example of how deeply rooted these standard-issue counterculture clichés in Hollywood have become by now. Cameron has simply used these familiar bromides as shorthand to give his special-effects spectacular some resonance. He wrote it this way not to be controversial, but quite the opposite: He was making something he thought would be most pleasing to the greatest number of people.

Will it be? Aside from the anti-American, anti-human politics, the movie is nearly three hours long, and it doesn’t have a single joke in it. There is no question that Avatar is an astonishing piece of work. It is, for about two-thirds of its running time, an animated picture that looks like it’s not an animated picture.

On the other hand, who cares? It doesn’t count for much that the technical skill on display makes it easier to suspend disbelief and make you think you’re watching something take place on a distant planet. Getting audiences to suspend disbelief isn’t the hard part; we suspend disbelief all the time. It’s how we can see any movie about anything and get involved in the story. The real question is this: If Avatar were drawn like a regular cartoon, or had been made on soundstages with sets and the like, would it be interesting? Would it hold our attention? The answer is, unquestionably no. There’s no chance anybody would even have put it into production, no matter that Cameron made the box-office bonanza Titanic. So the question is: Does the technical mastery on display in Avatar outweigh the unbelievably banal and idiotic plot, the excruciating dialogue, the utter lack of any quality resembling a sense of humor?

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Even on the level of spectacle, Avatar is exceptional not only for technical sophistication, but for what it creates with that technical sophistication. As my friend Jeff Overstreet noted in his review:

Normally, innovations are employed to bring horrors and nightmares to life. Peter Jackson depended on New Zealand for the beauty of The Lord of the Rings’ Middle Earth, using effects to depict monsters, wars, and wastelands.

By contrast, Pandora is a whole new world of breathtaking beauty, exploding with wild new life forms that give soar, spark, prowl, pounce, gallop, and graze. Borrowing heavily, and brilliantly, from what he’s seen in deep-sea exploration, Cameron has built the most enchanting magic kingdom since Dorothy first stepped into Technicolor Oz. The first hour feels like something Terrence Malick might film in a rain forest in a galaxy far, far away.

Or, as I put it in my review, “Pandora is like a Miyazaki world brought to life (with echoes of Nausicaa and Laputa in particular).” What is better than that?

I think that the idea that an anti-corporate message can’t exist in corporate produced artwork is just logically unfounded, and really just a way to belittle liberal opinion in movies. It’s no more hypocritical than an anarchist voting in order to express his beliefs, or a person paying money to print fliers decrying the evils of capitalism. Everyone works from within certain systems to change them, and deriding that as inherently hypocritical is just self-service. I appreciated this review but that was not an argument that you’ve generated with a great deal of responsibility.

Of course, Reason magazine has an editor-in-chief who is such a fierce opponent of government expenditure, he has degrees from three state schools….

Also… I really, really wish conservative and libertarian cultural critics would decide if politicized reviews are kosher or not. Seriously. Why is it not okay when Dana Stevens does it, exactly, if this is okay too?

I think that if your critic holds to none of the premises of the genre, then that critic is in the wrong business. Dana Stevens reviewing an action movie is something like Rod Dreher reviewing erotica (or at least what I imagine it would be like if Mr. Dreher was so employed). Rod would spend 75% of the review fretting over sexual morality; Dana Stevens spends 75% of action movie reviews in paeans to gun control. In both cases, well, it’s kind of the point.

I don’t think that Peter is in the same position here. I think his comments on the eco-politics of Avatar are about equivalent with say, Dana Stevens commenting on the abortion politics of Knocked Up.

But, I agree with you that the “he’s a hypocrite for using corporate money to create an anti-corporate screed of a movie” thing is pretty weak sauce.

Well…..you neither liked or understood District 9, Suderman……you are a conservative, and means contemporary American culture is opaque to you.
Remember Poulos’ whiny post about geek/gamer culture and the romance in Avatar? Obviously you don’t “get” gamer culture either……Pandora IS Nagrand.

AVATAR is the rare film where every bit of criticism and praise given to it is equally valid. It is visually stunning and viscerally real in a way previous FX heavy films have not been. It also is nothing more than DANCESWITHWOLVES dumbed down several degrees and set on an alien planet.

that could even be true, Mike….but it is also the next Star Wars.
and it isn’t dances with wolves…..it is District 9 rendered in PG-13 and gamespk
it is l33t hardcore pro memetic engineering wrapped in an irresistible hi-tech shell targeting the next gen of voters, and ALSO the next evolutionary step in full immersion film environment.
you guyz are just pissy cuz u got nothing but old white christian ppl in your failboat anymore.
you can’t get to cooltown on the conservative express…..it doesnt go there anymore.

Uh, no. Adjusted for inflation, STARWARS made 1.2 billion dollars in domestic box office with cheaper tickets and a smaller population. AVATAR is a spectacular technical achievement and a pretty good piece of entertainment…but there ain’t gonna be nobody quoting this movie in other movies 20 years from now.

There’s nothing wrong with not being the next STARWARS. Being the first AVATAR should be more than good enough.

When was genocide official American government policy toward American Indians? And please be so kind to point me to a book or internet link where I can read up on your distorted view of history.

Suderman,

The more I read about “Avatar”, the less I want to see it. “District 9” was in my top three for the year (along with “The Hurt Locker” and “The Hangover”), so all I can say is your judgement is impeccable. One more recommendation — best foreign vampire film you’ve never heard of is “Thirst” and not “Let the Right One In”.

There’s something to be said for a movie that is basically the pitch-perfect incarnation of a very familiar story. Lord of the Rings was hardly a target of criticism for a plot that was uninspired even when Tolkein made it up, because it was literally the best fantasy movie that had ever been made, and probably will be for some time.

Obviously its few critics know little about movies but pretend that they know a quite a bit. By deliberately declaring their preferences for movies that are bad story-tellers and therefore unpopular, simply because they are high-falutin doesn’t help either.

Let’s be honest and say it how it is: They just couldn’t stomach the Native American v Pilgrim storyline, and took it way too seriously. Relax, sit back and just enjoy the movie spectacle. Lighten up, it’s only a movie and a spectacular one at that.

So please, get off your high horse already. Avatar is a movie, a science-fiction movie. Sure, it has philosophical and metaphysical underpinnings, but it is a great movie!

m_c,
“you can’t get to cooltown on the conservative express…..it doesnt go there anymore.” Oh, m_c, you are so cool and up with what the kids are into! “cooltown”. Really?
“you guyz are just pissy cuz u got nothing but old white christian ppl in your failboat anymore.”
“failboat”? Idiot.
What video games do you play, m_c? Since you are so hip. A great number of video games have a much more engrossing plot and better characters than Avatar. Bioshock. Medal Gear Solid. Elder Scrolls, etc…
Video games are fun because you participate in the action. Avatar is like one long “cut scene”.
Stop pretending to be in touch, m_c.
This movie may make tons of money and produce some great Happy Meal toys, but if the characters aren’t memorable, then it will have limited influence – cultural or otherwise – beyond the film-making technique. Too early to tell…